1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the telecommunications field and, in particular, to a method and system for controlling incoming phone calls using the World-Wide Web (WWW).
2. Description of Related Art
Incoming telephone calls are normally indicated by a ring signal without any accompanying information. Consequently, a telephone subscriber basically has two choices in responding to an incoming call, either answer the call or disregard it. Caller ID and other types of telephone number indicators (e.g., a calling party or A-number indicator) provide additional caller information to the subscriber, and telephone answering machines provide yet another way to identify callers.
A problem with ordinary telephones is that subscribers are alerted to incoming calls with a ring signal only. The more advanced telephones can include displays that show the calling party's telephone number. However, most subscribers use telephones without such displays. Consequently, if such a subscriber is otherwise occupied when an ordinary telephone rings, the only practical options available are to answer or not answer the call. There is no real polite way the subscriber can refuse to answer the call, leave a message stating that the call will be returned at a later time, or re-direct the call to another phone. The latter action could be necessitated, for example, if the subscriber was using the telephone connection for Internet browsing, and that line was occupied and thus "busy" for the incoming calls. As described below, the present invention successfully resolves this problem.